Pages

2 April 2016

Addlestones Cloudy Premium Cider (Sainsburys) [By @SpectreUK]

This Addlestones Cloudy Premium Cider was brewed at the Shepton Mallet Cider Mill. This 5% volume cider was made with locally sourced bittersweet English cider apples, which were fermented twice, but not filtered giving the cider its cloudiness. The label tells me that this cider is “perfectly balanced, with a rich and mellow character, and a soft and gentle sparkle”. So if I open it and it explodes like an over shaken bottle of Bubbly, and then makes my face curl with bitterness, I’ll be writing about it right here. Having said that, I should have a lot more faith as even the traditional look of the bottle and the image of the giant cider apple tree produced feelings of serenity, even after my rather frustrating week at work after Easter.

There was a pleasing fizz on popping the bottle cap followed by a light, but slightly bitter smell of cider apples. There was something strangely relaxing about the glug… glug… glug of the cloudy mid-brown mildly carbonated liquid as I poured it into my waiting glass. This cider is like a summer’s day rolled into one bottle. There is sweetness to start with in the cider apple flavour, like a cool early morning as the sunrises and the wetness of the dew on oceans of green grass. This is followed closely by bitterness, like that hungry feeling just before a late lunch. Then there is dryness into the aftertaste like a hot afternoon smoothing out to early evening after a long day at work. This is a complex mix of flavours produced by masters who wait under a giant tree where only the highest quality cider apples will do. They take care of those apples, ferment them… twice to make sure, and then serve them up with only the best intentions.